I am a professor and endowed professor at the University of Houston where I founded and direct the Sasakawa International Center for Space Architecture and head the graduate program in space architecture. My background deals extensively with research, planning and design of habitats, structures and other support systems for applications in space and extreme environments on Earth. I have recently written a new book titled "Climate of Corruption: Politics and Power Behind the Global Warming Hoax". It can be previewed and ordered at www.climateofcorruption.com. Additional information about my book and views can be found on my YouTube address: http://www.youtube.com/climateofcorruption.

Unwrapping The ObamaCare Surprise Package

Just as Nanci Pelosi gleefully anticipated, those nearly one thousand pages of “Affordable” Care Act legislation that she couldn’t wait to open continue to reveal lots of surprises. Some of those surprises are directly at odds with what we were repeatedly promised by the President. Included are unexpected cancellations of existing private insurance plans and sticker shock from available government approved alternatives.

What additional ObamaCare surprises are in store for Americans? For example, what about near-term and sustained influences upon available medical service providers; business employee insurance coverage and hiring strategies; federal and state programs, taxes and debt; and, oh yeah, those upcoming mid-term congressional elections and beyond?

Many of those gift package surprises are now proving to be more astonishing than even Nancy and other formerly ecstatic Dem colleagues had ever bargained for.

If You Like Your Existing Insurance Plan You Can Keep It…Just Kidding.

Flash back to 1994 when Bill Clinton was pushing for HillaryCare. The insurance industry responded by launching devastatingly effective “Harry and Louise” ads with a simple message. One of them witnessed the middle-class couple at their kitchen table disdainfully surveying a heap of documents as a narrator intoned that “things are changing, and not all for the better…and now the government may force us to pick from a few plans designed by government bureaucrats.” At that point, Louise observes that “having choices we don’t like is like no choice at all.” Harry and Louise conclude “They choose, and we lose.”

Those ads ended all hope for HillaryCare. Even though Democrats controlled both houses of Congress, Clinton’s bill never made it out of committees.

That lesson was certainly not lost on either candidate or President Obama…there would be no repeat Harry and Louise moments for him. So, armed with exclusive ownership of an explicitly programmed teleprompter, the presidential podium and a dutiful mainstream media, he told American voters again and again, “If you like your insurance, you can keep it. Period.”

If that period at the end sounded very conclusive, he now explains that it was merely a verbal typo intended to be an asterisk. What he had meant to say all along was that you can keep your existing plan provided that government bureaucrats don’t deem it for any reason to be “substandard”. Like, for example, by not including vital maternal care provisions for men and seniors.

And About Keeping Your Doctor, the Bigger Question is Whether Your Doctor Will Keep You.

Then there’s a matter of another missing asterisk. You may remember that the President also repeatedly said “If you’ve got a doctor that you like, you will be able to keep your doctor.” Yet that isn’t what his Health and Human Services department put on its website in response to a frequently asked query “Can I keep my own doctor?” No, instead, they answer that depending on the plan you choose in the Marketplace, you may be able to keep your current doctor. This assumes, of course, that it’s a particular plan and doctor network that their bureaucrats approved in the first place. Accordingly, ObamaCare doesn’t guarantee that you can keep either.

Only plans that existed in their current unchanged form prior to ObamaCare passage on March 23, 2010 are eligible to be “kept”. Other subsequent ones will be subject to a raft of new regulations, requirements and restrictions.

Economist Christopher Conover at the Center for Health Policy & Inequalities Research at Duke University estimates that 129 million Americans with private health plans could lose their coverage when ObamaCare is fully implemented due to a combination of factors including cancellations and changes due to “improvements” to existing coverage required under the new law. That’s 68% of an estimated 129 million people. Of these, between 18 and 50 million will have existing plans taken away entirely, including 9.2 million to 15.4 million in the non-group, or individual market, and 9 million to 35 million in the employer-based market.

At the same time, new regulations, requirements and restrictions are shrinking and constraining the pool of doctors, clinics and hospitals that will be accessible to those seeking their services as well. At the same time that more than 30 million formerly uninsured people are soon being added to government exchanges, doctors plan to abandon Medicare and Medicaid programs in droves.

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